Assisted dying vote: Leadbeater says bill not a ‘slippery slope’ as Badenoch raises fears over safeguards – live | Politics

Two frontbenchers are now winding up.

Kieran Mullan, a shadow justice minister, is summing up for the opposition. But it is a free vote, so there is no party position to sum up. Mullan says even the best pain relief cannot help some people who are dying.

But he also acknowledges that opponents of the bill, who place a premium on the sanctity of life, have a good argument.

He says MPs should vote with humility, and with respect for each vote cast, in whichever direction.

If you want to read the debate, Hansard will have full transcript online here.

At this point the online version covers all speeches up to Kit Malthouse’s. The transcript is normally about three hours behind proceedings in the Commons. The whole thing should be up by 5.30pm.

Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, calls Vikki Slade, the Lib Dem MP. He says hers will be the final speech before the wind-ups.

Kim Leadbeater makes a point of order. She says she wants to correct the record. She says in her speech earlier she said she had consulted the medical profession and the judiciary at the highest levels. She says she has been in correspondent with the Judicial Office. But she says the serving judiciary have not expressed a view on the bill, and she wants to make that clear.

The Labour MP Florence Eshalomi said that she was opposed to the bill in part because minority groups would be particularly vulnerable. She explained:

We must recognise the hard truth that health inequalities are wide and persistent. We know that black and minority ethnic disabled people have far worse health outcomes than the national average.

I’ve seen this first-hand, caring for my mother who suffered with sickle cell anaemia.

As a teenager, I would be by her side when she was in excruciating pain, explaining to a doctor who would not believe her when she told them she needed lifesaving medication, and sadly this is still the reality today.

I am reminded of the death of Evan Smith on April 25 [2019] at North Middlesex Hospital.

Evan suffered from sickle cell too. He was in so much pain that he had to ring 999 from his hospital bed because he was denied oxygen and basic care by the doctors.

Put simply: we should be helping people to live comfortable, pain-free lives on their own terms before we think about making it easier for them to die …

How can we be possibly satisfied that this bill would deliver equality and freedom in death when we do not yet have this in life?

The Green party MP Siân Berry told MPs in the debate that she was in favour of the bill.

While we don’t have to choose between this Bill and better palliative care, we do have to give dying people the right to choose which ending is right for them, so please, please vote for this bill today.

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John Hayes (Con) told MPs that he was against the bill because it would change the relationship between patients and doctors.

This bill changes the relationship between clinicians and patients forever. It says to the NHS, your job is not only protect and preserve life, it is sometimes to take life. I am not prepared for our NHS to be changed in that way, and beyond that it changes society’s view of what life and death is all about.

There are many cruel and spiteful and ruthless and unkind people in the world and there are many vulnerable and frail people, and when those two collide, it’s not a good outcome for the second of those groups.

Alicia Kearns (Con) told MPs that her mother’s experience of cancer made her support assisted dying.

Imagine a situation where you have cancer that day by day is breaking every individual vertebrae on your body, one by one. There is nothing that can take away the pain, and that is a situation in which my mother lost her life, her last words were ‘I cannot go on like this’.

And thankfully for her, there were only a few more days of pain. But for others, there are months, and before they get to that six months, they will have suffered from years of excruciating agony that palliative care cannot resolve.

To deny choice to others, especially those with only six months to live, where their personal choice does no harm, is wrong.

And the Labour MP Rachel Hopkins said her grandfather, Harold Hopkins, “suffered greatly” as he was dying from cancer.

It was the haunted look on my father’s face when he arrived home – having spent the final few days with Harold in terrible pain and suffering before he finally died – that had a lasting impression on me, and that surely in a modern society, if we are able to live a good life, we must be able to have a good death.

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Many MPs have been using social media to say how they will vote in the debate today. Here are some of their messages posted this morning.

Shaun Davies, Labour MP for Telford, is voting for.

Saqib Bhatti, Conservative MP for Meriden and Solihull East, is against.

Tonia Antoniazzi, Labour MP for Gower, who spoke in the debate earlier, is for

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, who is now an independent MP, says he cannot support the bill.

Charlie Maynard, Lib Dem MP for Witney, is for (at least for now).

Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP for Ashfield, says his constituents are in favour (but he does not say here how he will vote).

Kirsteen Sullivan, Labour MP for Bathgate and Linlithgow, says she cannot back the bill.

Callum Anderson, the Labour MP for Buckingham and Bletchley, says he is in favour.

Ruth Jones, Labour MP for Newport West, is against.

Tulip Siddiq, a Treasury minister, is for.

Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative co-chair, is against.

Rachel Taylor, the Labour MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, is for.

David Reed, Conservative MP for Exmouth and Exeter East, is against.

Polly Billington, Labour MP for East Thanet, is against.

Nia Griffith, a Welsh Office minister, is against.

Zubir Ahmed, Labour MP for Glasgow South West, is against.

Steff Aquarone, Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk, is in favour.

Carla Lockhart (DUP) says the safeguards against coercion in the bill are not adequate. The bill will change the way society values life. And it will put vulnerable people at risk. That is why she and her DUP colleagues will be voting against the bill.

Anna Dixon (Lab), another MP who signed the reasoned amendment saying the bill should not get a second reading to allow time for a full policy review, said she did not believe the procedure for private member’s bill was adequate for an issue of this complexity. In line with the precautionary principle, the bill should be blocked until there has been a proper public consultation, she says.

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Marie Tidball (Lab) says today’s decision is the hardest she has had to make during a career in disability law and policy. She says she did not expect to be voting for the bill, but she will be doing so. She says she thinks it is right that people should have the option of assisted dying, but she says she would like to see stronger safeguards introduced as the bill goes through parliament.

UPDATE: Tidball said:

When I was six years old I had major surgery on my hips. I was in body plaster from my chest to my ankles, in so much pain and requiring so much morphine that my skin began to itch. I remember vividly laying in a hospital bed in Sheffield Children’s Hospital and saying to my parents ‘I want to die, please let me die’.

I needed to escape from that body that I was inhabiting. That moment has come back to me all these years later. That moment made it clear to me that if the bill was about intolerable suffering I would not be voting for it.

Tidball said she had since lived a “good life”, but added:

That moment also gave my a glimpse of how I would want to live my death, just as I have lived my life. Empowered by choices available to me. Living that death with dignity and respect and having the comfort of knowing that I might have control over that very difficult time.

Back in the Commons, Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader, says is he opposed to the bill. It will create a space for coercion, he says.

He recalls what happened when his mother was told she was terminally ill. A doctor said terminally ill people often suffer from depression. That is why they would be vulnerable to coercion, he says.

He says the government’s own suicide prevention adviser is against this bill.

And he says he is opposing this bill as a liberal. He is a liberal, not a libertarian, he says. He says people should not have a freedom if it encroaches on someone else’s freedom, and giving people the right to assisted dying would stop people from being free from coercion to die, he says.